Review of the film 'Crash'

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050505/REVIEWS/50502001
http://danglinginthetournefortia.blogspot.com/2006/10/roger-and-me-by-scott-foundas.html
The film ‘Crash’ released in 2005 and directed by Paul Heggis is, to my mind, a hard hitting, fascinating and dramatic reflection of racism in Los Angeles. Roger Ebert sees the film as “interlocking stories”. He talks of the feelings of prejudice and of the consequences experienced by the characters. I agree with his analysis of the film as being “constructed as a series of parables.” All the characters experience or display racist attitudes, and as the film progresses, there follows a catalogue of misunderstandings, assumptions, stereotyping, and ignorance of other cultures and inaccurate racial identity. They are all pushed into a closer encounter with others through their accidents. We are all encouraged to form opinions of the different citizens but those opinions alter as we learn more about them and their lives and relationships. The frighteningly racist cop who assaults a woman passenger in a car is later seen to have an ill father for whom he cares, and it is possible to recognise the anger and resentment he takes out on the black official because of his anguish. The film cleverly illustrates how people’s ethnicity is misunderstood, with an Iraqi being taken for an Arab and a mixed race woman being erroneously seen as a Latino by her black boyfriend. The family and working relationships of all the characters is seen as important; partners, colleagues, parents and children, and a message of learning what the priorities are comes across. The DA’s wife changes from an angry, paranoid, judging personality, to a softer, more vulnerable and needy person, as she embraces her Latino maid because of her compassion, after Sandra Bullock’s character falls downstairs.

Scott Fondas writing in the LA Weekly slates the film and suggests it is the “worst film of 2005”, not the best. He comments, he sees it as “a self-congratulatory liberal jerk-off movie.......................to remind us that white people suffer too, how nobody is without his prejudices” and goes on to suggest that the film doesn’t reflect life in LA, or even life on planet Earth.
Reminders that white people suffer too and that no-one is without prejudice could be viewed as a truism. Maybe his complaint that it is not accurate or representative might emanate from not wishing to agree on the amount of racism there is. The way guilty and victimised characters are duplicated and mixed together, to perhaps a less than realistic extent, is surely recognised by most filmgoers, but is definitely not the most important point of the film, nor does it, in my view, detract from its power.

I thought it an impressive film which should be applauded for the way it grabs the nettle of racism in the USA and its aftermath.

Jill Glazier